Personal Chef To Go's Official Blog

January 2011

01/26/2011

People have acknowledged the value of sleep for centuries. But they’ve focused primarily on sleep’s impact on brain function. “If you talk to some neuroscientists today, the prevailing view is still that sleep is only for the brain,” says Eve Van Cauter, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and an expert on the ways sleep affects endocrine function.

Over the last few decades, sleep researchers across the country have been overturning that view. Their studies indicate that curtailing sleep and getting poor-quality sleep are implicated in many diseases that affect the entire body, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cancer and impaired immune function.

One of the most startling observations has come from Van Cauter and her University of Chicago colleagues. Over the course of four studies, they showed that people who don’t sleep enough, night after night, unwittingly trigger a hormonal storm that causes their appetites to rise.

Other researchers followed up with studies and found the implications of Van Cauter’s work borne out in real life: People who sleep fewer hours tend to become overweight or even obese. Even a difference of one hour is significant. Columbia University researchers, for instance, found that people between the ages of 32 and 59 who slept only four hours were 73 percent more likely to become obese than those sleeping seven to nine hours. Even a difference of two hours was significant. Those who slept only six hours were 23 percent more likely to become obese than those sleeping seven hours.

Does this mean we can shed pounds by getting additional shuteye? Maybe, but research hasn’t yet proven this supposition — the studies looking at whether overweight people shed pounds when they sleep more are just getting under way. Still, it’s clear that insufficient sleep encourages weight gain and that getting adequate sleep helps prevent it.

Bleary-Eyed and Craving Cookies

Van Cauter set out to study the connection between sleep loss and appetite after anecdotal reports from sleep studies indicated that subjects were overeating during extended stays in the laboratory. The common assumption was that they ate because they were bored, but she decided to test that assumption. In the first-ever study to make the connection between sleep and appetite, published in 2004 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Van Cauter’s team brought 12 lean and healthy young men into the lab for two four-hour nights of sleep followed by two 10-hour nights. They found that when the subjects slept for only four hours, they showed dramatic changes in two hormones that regulate appetite.

Blood draws revealed an 18 percent decrease in leptin, a satiety hormone produced by the stomach that tells the brain when the body has had enough food. They also showed a 28 percent increase in ghrelin, a hunger-causing hormone produced by our fat cells indicating that our energy reserves are running low and need to be replenished.

Taken together, these two hormones boosted the young men’s hunger — even though the amount they ate and exercised was the same during their nights of ample sleep. The subjects reported a 24 percent increase in appetite after less sleep, with a special eagerness for chips, cakes and cookies, and breads and pasta.

“This study suggests that there could be long-term consequences with prolonged sleep deprivation — especially if you’re trying to control your food intake or stick to a healthy diet,” says Kristen Knutson, PhD, a University of Chicago assistant professor of medicine who’s been involved in many sleep studies. “They were craving junk food, not apples and carrot sticks.”

Body-Clock Confusion

Researchers know that sleep deprivation disrupts one of the most basic mechanisms in our body: our internal clock. And, studies show that messing with our internal clock may have serious implications for our weight. We evolved over millions of years shaped by the earth’s cycles of day and night, and light and darkness, and our body’s clock still ticks according to those basic cycles.

This clock — often called our circadian rhythm — isn’t just a metaphor. It has a precise location in the brain’s hypothalamus, in two pinhead-size clumps of neurons called the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) that sit above our two optic nerves. The SCN monitors the light coming in through our eyes and, based on the amount and timing of light, regulates vital rhythmic functions throughout the body, including temperature, the release of hormones, and metabolism.

“All the different organs that regulate metabolism have circadian rhythms,” says Phyllis Zee, MD, PhD, professor of neurology and director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Northwestern University. “And when they’re out of sync, it can expose one to changes in metabolism or to choosing inappropriate food or to eating too much.”

Some researchers think late nights fueled by bright lights and glowing computer and TV screens may trick our bodies into thinking we’re in a sort of perpetual summer — a high-activity time when our hunter-gatherer predecessors would have been loading up on readily available carbohydrates in preparation for a long, cold winter.

Playing Catch-up

If we build up a sleep “debt” of an hour or two per night, Monday through Friday, we’re generally not going to be able to make it up in one weekend. We carry that debt and the burden of sleepiness forward, often not even realizing how sleep impaired we are.

“Several studies have shown that after cumulative sleep deprivation, individuals are no longer able to recognize the degree of sleepiness under which they operate,” says Van Cauter. “They think they’re OK, but when their performance is tested, they fail miserably.”

What we need, say some experts, is a new characterization of sleep — one that doesn’t regard it as a time when we just turn ourselves off. We need a new appreciation of slumber as a part of the environmental metronome guiding important cyclical functions in our body — functions that affect our weight, our body chemistry, our neurology and our overall well-being.

Most of us assume the routines of a lean lifestyle — like healthy meals and exercise — are limited to our waking hours. But that point of view leaves out the crucial dark side of our 24-hour cycle, when sleep prepares our bodies and minds to function at their best on the following day. It ignores the fact that our bodies require adequate downtime to regulate systems that have a direct impact on whether we accumulate unwanted weight, or succeed in evading it — now and over the long haul.

01/17/2011

To celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s enduring and powerful message of peace and acceptance, here are some of his wise words. Which quote is most powerful for you?

We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.

Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

In honor of MLK, please share your dream for the future in the comments.

01/12/2011

The Definitive Guide to Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions

Let’s face it: most of us fail when it comes to sticking to resolutions — so much so that many people swear never to make resolutions again.

And yet the rest of us are eternally hopeful when the New Year comes around, believing without any credible evidence that we can improve our lives, that change is possible, that we’re not going to be stuck in the same old rut again this year.

I’m here to tell you that you can do it. It’s possible. I’ll show you how.

The Problem with Most ResolutionsWhile I love the optimism of New Year’s Resolutions, unfortunately, the enthusiasm and hope often fades within weeks, and our efforts at self improvement come to a whimpering end.

New Year’s Resolutions usually fail because of a combination of some of these reasons:

We try to do too many resolutions at once, and that spreads our focus and energies too thin. It’s much less effective to do many habits at once (read more).

We only have a certain amount of enthusiasm and motivation, and it runs out because we try to do too much, too soon. We spend all that energy in the beginning and then run out of steam.

We try to do really tough habits right away, which means it’s difficult and we become overwhelmed or intimidated by the difficulty and quit.

We try to be “disciplined” and do very unpleasant habits, but our nature won’t allow that to last for long. If we really don’t want to do something, we won’t be able to force ourselves to do it for long.

Life gets in the way. Things come up unexpectedly that get in the way of us sticking with a habit.

Resolutions are often vague — I’m going to exercise! — but don’t contain a concrete action plan and don’t use proven habit techniques. That’s a recipe for failure.

There are other reasons, but the ones above are easily sufficient to stop resolutions from succeeding.

The 6 Changes MethodSo what are we to do? I’ve created the 6 Changes Method, along with a new site called 6Changes.com, to solve these problems:

We only focus on one habit change at a time, so our focus and energies aren’t spread thinly.

We implement the habit changes gradually, so we don’t run out of steam.

We start out really, really easily, so it isn’t intimidating.

We focus on enjoyable activities, so we don’t need “discipline”.

We have two months to do the habit change, so if something comes up, it’s but a small bump in the road. And because we’re publicly committed, we’re going to get back on track.

We have a very specific plan with actions built in, using proven habit change techniques.

If you stick with the method, you’ll do much better than you’ve done in the past with New Year’s Resolutions. You’ll focus on creating long-lasting habits rather than trying to reach a short-term goal that fails. You’ll maintain your enthusiasm for longer and not become overwhelmed by the difficulty of change. You’ll have habits that will change your life, and that’s no small feat.

The MethodSo how does the 6 Changes method work?

It’s simple:

Pick 6 habits for 2010.

Pick 1 of the 6 habits to start with.

Commit as publicly as possible to creating this new habit in 2 months.

Break the habit into 8 baby steps, starting with a ridiculously easy step. Example: if you want to floss, the first step is just to get out a piece of floss at the same time each night.

Choose a trigger for your habit – something already in your routine that will immediately precede the habit. Examples: eating breakfast, brushing your teeth, showering, waking up, arriving at the office, leaving the office, getting home in the evening.

Do the 1st, really easy baby step for one week, right after the trigger. Post your progress publicly. (Read more.)

Each week, move on to a slightly harder step. You’ll want to progress faster, but don’t. You’re building a new habit. Repeat this until you’ve done 8 weeks.

You now have a new habit! Commit to Habit No. 2 and repeat the process.

Check the PCTG Blog, All You Can Feed On, for further reading about establishing new habits for the new year!